FOLLOW US TO THE FUTURE2016 / Final exhibition ‘Future Thinking and Trendspotting’ course

How could our lives look like in 2030, and how would you position yourself in it?

‘Follow Us To The Future’, is an exhibition to showcase and celebrate the work produced by 60 students after working with them for 7 weeks and introducing them to the field of design futures.

The exhibition is set up around different entry points one can follow to navigate through a landscape of future fictions, which are laid out and read out loud by the students.

The students worked around 8 research domains we provided them with, such as Make It Work - on the future of work, skills, professions and productivity, Leisure Pleasure - on the future free time, tourism, entertainment and play or Self Unself - on the future of identity, relationships, and empathy.

The focus of this course has been on the exploration of the possible and the articulation of alternatives to how we live today. It does this without trying to predict, judge, or pretending to know for sure how things will be like. The visions presented, move beyond simple notions of utopian and dystopian futures, into a more complex and nuanced reality. They come from a process of scanning a broad range of so-called ‘weak signals’ and taking into account uncertainties; to imagining how these might affect the way we live tomorrow.